Legislature wraps up special sessionIn the days leading up to Independence Day, members of the Arkansas House of Representatives were reminded not only of the significance of the founding of our country but we were also given a lesson in the history of our state. Due to ongoing construction in our House Chamber, we held an Extraordinary Session in the Old State House Museum. The museum once served as our State Capitol building and is now is the oldest standing State Capitol west...

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State Capitol Week in ReviewThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

A lesson in state historyIn the days leading up to Independence Day, members of the Arkansas House of Representatives were reminded not only of the significance of the founding of our country but we were also given a lesson in the history of our state. Due to ongoing construction in our House Chamber, we held an Extraordinary Session in the Old State House Museum. The museum once served as our State Capitol building and is now is the oldest standing State Capitol west...

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Arkansas House of RepresentativesThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Happy Birthday AmericaO, to be there with Francis Scott Key, Seeing red glaring rockets and bombs bursting o’er the sea To view Old Glory all tattered and torn, And witness another chapter of America born. To envision that sunrise with the smoke and haze With everyone staring with unbelief in a daze. The words were scrawled on parchment with a quill And you could see the lines marked out to fit the bill Rephrasing the text so there would be no doubt. Understanding ...

The Larry Pillow storyThe English statesman and orator Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is so true and applies to much of our society today. A good friend of mine in Conway is the Rev. Dr. Larry Pillow. He is originally from Monette and grew up in a home with an alcoholic father. Despite his upbringing he succeeded in getting an education, including a doctoral degree. He began working in ...

Mom wants daughter's name to be AwesomeI have a confession to make. I have never liked the word awesome. I just haven’t cared for it since the 1980s. I thought it would have gone away at some point, but it never did — most likely to terrorize me until my final days. Thanks. Here’s a new one, however. A Juneau, Alaska, woman wants to give her daughter an awesome middle name. Literally. Lisa Flores is seeking court approval to legally change her daughter’s middle name to Awesome. The...

On responsibility and freedomWe declared our independence from Great Britain 238 years ago this week. It was a declaration long in coming, brought about by the overreaching rule of King George III and Britain's insistence on taxation without representation. The taxation began in the 1760s, the Boston Massacre occurred in 1770, the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775. Patrick Henry's call to action, "Give me liberty or give me...

Our arrogant presidentPresident Obama appears to have forgotten — or ignored — why we have elections. One reason is to stop, or slow down, an agenda the public doesn’t like. When polls began reflecting buyer’s remorse about Mr. Obama in 2010, voters elected a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and might well have done the same in the Senate in 2012 were it not for some weak GOP candidates, especially in Nevada and Delaware. President Obama acts as ...

Paying for wants, not for needsMy wife, Melissa, matter-of-factly made this statement the other day: We have been trained to expect that our needs should be cheap or free, and our wants can be expensive. The context was a discussion about the costs of health care, an obvious need. Americans expect insurance or the government to shoulder most of the cost of health care, employers to pay for most of the costs of insurance, and out-of-pocket expenses to be minimal. We’re outra...

America’s BirthdayBirthdays are supposed to be times for celebration and gift-giving. But America’s upcoming birthday on the Fourth of July is a time when the gift most needed is an urgent warning about the dangers of losing the things that have made this country America -- and have long made “America” a ringing word of freedom, not only in this country but to people around the world. All is not lost. But all could be lost -- especially if too many of us take f...

Short-term answers to long-term problemsLITTLE ROCK — The measures lawmakers are taking up this week to avert a looming increase in teacher health insurance premiums and ease an influx of state inmates crowding local jails won’t completely solve either problem. They’re designed to at least give the Legislature and the next governor breathing room to look at longer term fixes next year. Gov. Mike Beebe and lawmakers behind the proposals on the agenda for this week’s special session a...

Woman says pot came with fast-food orderA Frederick, Md., woman said she was served a bag of marijuana with her fast-food order at a Sonic drive-in. The Frederick News-Post reported Friday that Carla McFarland said she found the little plastic baggie in a container along with the French fries she bought Wednesday in Frederick. McFarland said she complained to a manager and called police. She said a manager later told her an employee was fired after saying the bag must have slipped f...

Reasons to love soccerAh, the World Cup — that magical time, every four years, when America pretends to care about soccer. It’s a shame, too. I mean, it’s a shame America doesn’t express an interest more when there aren’t World Cups being sought after. Team USA does play year-after-year, after all. Or maybe you didn’t realize that. One of my favorite television shows, “Community,” which was recently canceled by NBC, put it this way: “I’m a cultured American. I’ve b...

Calling in the LegislatureLITTLE ROCK — I have called the Arkansas General Assembly to Little Rock for an extraordinary session, often referred to as a special session. There are legislative issues to be addressed before the next regular assembly convenes in January. But before I issued this call, I wanted legislators to be certain that a special session would be completed in three days. Three days is the shortest time that bills can progress through both the House and...

Back at the birthplace of state governmentWhen Arkansas became the 25th state in 1836, government officials moved into a new Greek Revival style building in downtown Little Rock. This despite the fact the building was not complete. Historical accounts say legislators became agitated when construction noise was drowning out testimony and questions from the House floor. It was another 6 years before the Old State House was complete. Now as fate has it, our current chamber in the Arkansa...

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Arkansas House of RepresentativesThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Problems building for yearsLITTLE ROCK — The problems being addressed by the legislature in this summer’s special session have been building for years. Consistent and sharp increases in health insurance costs have been a growing problem for public school employees for more than a decade. For even longer, dramatic increases in the inmate population have caused budget problems for lawmakers and officials of the state Correction Department, which operates state prisons. In...

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State Capitol Week in ReviewThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

A mid-week picker-upperA few years ago, my good friend Cliff Garrison invited me to attend a weekly prayer breakfast at his church. It took a while to get me there, but I have been going ever since. This prayer breakfast meets each Wednesday morning and Cliff calls it a good “mid-week picker-upper.” It is all of that and more. This is what I thought of when another friend sent me a great poem that was written back in 1927 and did not become widely popular until long...

All Senate — all the timeIt’s an off-year election, and the White House is securely in the Democratic camp for two more years. That means the focus is turning instead to down-ballot races. In the House of Representatives, all 435 members are up for reelection. The current split is 233 Republicans, 199 Democrats and three vacancies, and the House is projected to remain a Republican stronghold. While there might be some momentary excitement on the individual race level ...

A lame duck country?Pundits are pointing to President Barack Obama’s recent decline in public opinion polls, and saying that he may now become another “lame duck” president, unable to accomplish much during his final term in office. That has happened to other presidents. But it is extremely unlikely to happen to this president. There are reasons why other presidents have become impotent during their last years in office. But those reasons do not apply to Barack O...

Comments on Coach Joe Gibbs Game Plan for Life breakfastIt was a blessing to have a man with Hall of Fame Coach Joe Gibbs’ credentials come to the Arkansas River Valley and share his Game Plan for Life with us. In a couple of days you can go to www.gameplanforlife.com and see pictures of this event along with many others. It took a large steering committee to get the multitude of details done that are necessary to pull off an event of this size. Men like Jay Ham, Cameron Lane, Dr. Bruce Brown, Marv...

Following the greatest generation“Where are the men like that today?” My wife, Melissa, asked me that question during a phone conversation June 17. I did not take offense because I knew to which man she referred. She had been reading the obituary of Ed Penick, 92, husband, father, grandfather, CEO of Worthen Bank, community leader, and World War II photoreconnaissance pilot. I became acquainted with Ed about 12 years ago when Melissa and I were hired to write his and wife Eve...